Latest lockout mayhem: The Twitterview

Posted on: November 13, 2011 11:30 pm

Just when you thought the lockout couldn't get any weirder, behold: The Twitterview.

In a good idea gone bad, thus mimicking everything about the negotiations that will come to a head one away or another in the coming hours and perhaps days, commissioner David Stern and deputy commissioner Adam Silver fielded and answered questions about the stalemate from fans, media members and players on Twitter Sunday night.

This went well in a way that things went well for that one surviving dinosaur after the meteor shower, ensuing floods, and thousands of years of only amoebas inhabiting the Earth. If you enjoy this sort of thing, you can relive the experience here in our Eye on Basketball blog.

Stern and Silver -- primarily Silver, judging from the tone and familiar content of the answers -- did provide some useful information in response to specific questions about the league's latest proposal (the complete details of which were obtained by USA Today and are posted here). That would be the one that is on the table only until the players decide Monday whether to accept it for a vote or reject it, after which it will be replaced by a new negotiating position that includes a further reduced share of revenues for the players as well as a hard team salary cap and rollbacks of existing contracts.

In response to a couple of important questions about how the negotiations got to this point, Stern and Silver tried to explain why they would shift to a harsher proposal if the players rejected this one. "Teams suffering economic losses with no season," they replied. "No choice but to recover if season does not start soon."

Several of my followers quickly chimed in and pointed out that the league simultaneously claims to have lost enormous amounts of money by operating under the previous system, so shouldn't not operating be preferable? And also, that going from a proposal the players don't like to one they like much less could only accelerate the losses the league says it is trying to avoid.

So, yeah, this was going swell.

They dropped a couple of news Nuggets, saying in response to one question that contraction "has been discussed," but that it's "not a complete solution," and reiterating the legal position expressed in a federal lawsuit against the players that decertification of the union would result in all player contracts being voided.

They got hit with angry questions from players Spencer Hawes and Dwyane Wade, and more than a few people in my timeline came away with the impression that the league's answers were evasive and condescending.

"Does @NBA have, 'We need a system that allows all 30 teams to complete for a championship' on auto-answer?" one follower asked.

"If @NBA runs the bargaining sessions like this chat," wrote another, "I see why meetings take 15 hours."

Chris Paul at one point chimed in and chided Stern and Silver for failing to answer Hawes' question about why the lockout must continue if the players have addressed all the league's economic losses. Stern and Silver did not answer the question I sent them: "Does the union have the option of proposing amendments before indicating whether it would send it to the players for a vote? Or is this it?"

When they were finished alienating many of the league's more than 3 million followers, Stern and Silver ended the Twitterview after a final question from a media member, Sam Amick of SI.com: "Don't teams that received public funding for their arenas to be built have a responsibility to their communities to continue operations?"

"No mandate to operate unprofitably," they replied, and after 90 minutes and 29 questions, it was over.

"Thank you for participating," the NBA leadership said. "There is a fair deal on the table that will allow the season to start on December 15."

But there was one more tweet.

"We want our players and teams to do well and we hope our proposal is accepted," the NBA wrote. "Good night."

Before the ill-fated Twitterview began, I wrote this analysis of the players' various options and attempted to set the record straight about what specifically changed in this offer from the previous one. Never could I have imagined that Stern and Silver would take to Twitter in the coming hours and do this poor a job of explaining it.

About an hour after the Twitterview had mercifully ended, the NBA released a presentation on YouTube highlighting its proposal. The last time I looked at it Sunday night, it had 154 likes and 451 dislikes, but only 302 views. Which pretty much means the worst-case scenario: everyone has already made up their minds.

Latest lockout mayhem: The Twitterview

People make it sound evil for owners to want to make money and to guard against single teams amassing all the leagues talent. Remember who has had the better end of the CBA last six years.

If players get everything their way we pretty much know who will be in the finals every year and attendance would collapse because fans would not be interested in their teams knowing they have no shot in the post season.

The reason there is more competiveness is that there is a degree of player restriction on player movement. It needs to be stronger but not prohibitively so.

The views expressed in this blog are solely those of the author and do not reflect the views of CBS Sports or CBSSports.com